Perceived effects of health status on sexual activity in women and men older than 50 years

Table 2 Demographic, clinical, health status, health-related quality of life and global quality of life variables for all participants who reported that their health status had no/little effect and a large effect on their sexual activity

	No\little effect (n = 267)	Large effect (n = 39)	p-values***
Demograhpic
Age (years)	64 (9)	69 (8)	0.004
Age groups (years)
50-59	101 (38%)	5 (13%)	0.015
60-69	93 (35%)	18 (46%)
70-79	65 (24%)	13 (33%)
80-	8 (3%)	3 (8%)
Women	228 (85%)	28 (72%)	0.032
Weight (kg)	72.5 (13.0)	78.7 (16.3)	0.007
BMI (kg/m2)	26.0 (4.1)	27.8 (5.1)	0.018
Menopause (years)	49.2 (4.5)	49.6 (3.9)	0.658
Higher education (>13 years)	81 (32%)	9 (24%)	0.375
Married/cohabiting	186 (70%)	29 (74%)	0.593
Regular exercise*	215 (81%)	22 (56%)	0.001
Currently smoking	43 (16%)	5 (13%)	0.592
Co-morbidity
Mean total score for co-morbidity (range 0–6)	0.8 (0.9)	1.1 (0.9)	0.062
Clinical status
Osteoporois**	49 (18%)	9 (23%)	0.489
≥1 fall in the previous year	89 (39%)	12 (39%)	0.958
Previous fracture	122 (46%)	18 (46%)	0.545
Health status
Mean MHAQ***	1.0 (0.2)	1.1 (0.2)	0.567
Health related quality of life
SF-36 - PCS****	53 (8)	44 (9)	<0.001
SF-36 – MCS****	52 (8)	44 (12)	0.001
Global quality of life
QOLS*****	97 (9)	89 (11)	<0.001

*= more than 30 min three times each week.
**Osteoporosis at total hip and/or spine L2–L4.
***The MHAQ score ranges from 1 to 4 where 1 indicates a higher perception of the ability to perform daily living activities.
****The score for SF-36 ranges from 0 to 100 where 100 indicates a high HRQOL.
*****The QOLS score ranges from 16 to 112 where 112 indicates a high GQOL.
PCS = physical component summary, MCS = mental component summary, MHAQ = Modified Health Assessment Questionnaire, QOLS = quality of life scale.
Continuous variables are expressed as the mean and with standard deviation in brackets (SD) while categorical variables are expressed as numbers and percentage (%) in brackets. In the group comparisons, independent samples t-tests were used for continuous variables and chi-squared tests were used for categorical variables.

ISSN: 1477-7525